Changes in the symptom pattern and the densities of large-intestinal endocrine cells following Campylobacter infection in irritable bowel syndrome: a case report

Table 2 Number of colonic intraepithelial (IE) and lamina propria (LP) immune cells before, during and after Campylobacter infection

Cell type	Before infection	During infection	After infection		Controls^c95% confidence interval
Cell type	Before infection	During infection	2 months	4 months	Controls^c95% confidence interval
Leucocytes in LP^a	69	268	102	199	81-118
Leucocytes in IE^b	110	224	162	150	78-115
Lymphocytes in LP^a	3	39	2	2	0-5
Lymphocytes in IE^b	1	6	7	8	0-2
Mast cells^a	7	17	11	12	6-10

Quantifications of cells were conducted in ten randomly chosen fields using the Olympus CellSense software.
^aNumber of cells per field.
^bNumber of cells per mm² of epithelium.
^cThe control group comprised 27subjects (16 females and 11 males; mean age 52 years, range 20–69 years) who had submitted to colonoscopy for the following reasons: gastrointestinal bleeding, where the source of bleeding was identified as haemorrhoids (n=18), or angiodysplasia (n=2), and health worries resulting from a relative being diagnosed with colon carcinoma (n=7).